by Jerry AppsJerry's dad knows that no one can resist the taste of breaking ground rutabagas.Follow Jerry and his dad as they plant, harvest and sell the cream of the rutabaga crop.This hard-cover book is illustrated in full-color.

Blue Shadows Farm - A Novel

$

26.95

hard cover

Fans of Jerry Apps will delight in his latest novel, Blue Shadows Farm, which follows the intriguing family story of three generations on a Wisconsin farm.

Silas Starkweather, A Civil War veteran, is drawn to Wisconsin and homesteads 160 aces in Ames County, where he is known as the mysterious farmer forever digging holes. After yhears of hardship and toil, however, Silas develops a commitment to farming his land and respect for his new community.

Through the story of the Starkweather family's changing fortunes, and each generation's very different relationship with the farm and the land, Blue Shadows Farm is in some ways the narrative of all farmers and the increasingly difficult challenges they face as committed stewards of the land.

The year is 1955. Andy Meyer, a young farmer, manages the pickle factory in Link Lake, a rural town where the farms are small, the conversation is meandering, and the feeling is distinctly Midwestern. Workers sort, weigh, and dump cucumbers into huge vats where the pickles cure, providing a livelihood to local farmers. But the H.H. Harlow Pickle Company has appeared in town, using heavy-handed tactics to force family farmers to either farm the Harlow way or lose their biggest customer-and, possible, their land. Andy, himself the owner of a half-acre pickle patch, works part-time for the Harlow Company, a conflict that places him between the family farm and the big corporation. As he sees how Harolow begins to change the rural community and the lives of its people, Andy must make personal, ethical, and life-changing decisions.

Mixing humor with rural history, In a Pickle is a lament for a way of farm life lost to corporate farming, but it is also a hopeful story about the strength tradition still has to inform and inspire daily life.

The fourth novel in Jerry Apps's Ames County series, Cranberry Red brings the story into the present, portraying the challenges of agriculture in the twenty-first century.

As the novel opens, Ben Wesley has lost hi job as agricultural agent for Ames County. He is soon hired as a research application specialist for Osborne University, a for-profit institution that has developed "Cranberry Red," a new chemical that promises not only to improve cranberry crop yields but also to endow the fruits with the power to prevent heart disease, reduce brain damage from strokes, and ward off Alzheimer's disease. Ben must promote the new product to cranberry growers in Ames County and beyond, but he worries whether the promised results are credible. Was Cranberry Red rushed to market?

When the chemical does all that the university claims it will do, Ben is relieved...until disturbing side effects emerge. Can he criticize Cranberry Red and safeguard farmers and consumers without losing his job, or will Ben's honesty get him fired while putting his community at risk?

by Jerry AppsPlum Falls, New York, 1940s: Dismissed from Harvard Divinity School for his liberal views, Increase Joseph Link arrives home with a heavy heart.

He gives up his dream of becoming a minister to settle for life on the farm, until the day he is struck by lightning and hears a voice telling him to rise and speak.

Heeding that voice, Increase becomes a preacher, advocating for environmental protection and the end of slavery and war. His growing band of followers calls itself the Standalone Fellowship, and they accompany him on his move west to Wisconsin, to a place of better land and opportunity.

Life during the early to mid-20th century is often seen as a time of backbreaking work for meager returns. Often, the strength and resiliency of family and neighbors are overlooked. In Humor From The Country, master storyteller Jerry Apps gives us insights into the lighter side of country life. This soft-cover book has 160 pages and black/white photos.